Many people that I speak with tell me that they are so frustrated with the Aeroplan program. They find it so difficult to get any value out of their miles. Either there is no availability for the flights that they want or the fees are so outrageous that it is a major turn off. If you are interested in using your miles for YYZ-YVR at Christmas, you are going to have these same feelings towards the program. This will also come in handy to those who are noticing that their Aeroplan miles are about to expire and want to transfer them into something that can buy more time to get value out of them.

If you are thoroughly frustrated with the Aeroplan program, and would like to turn your hard earned miles into something that might be more valuable to you, there is a method to do this. Aeroplan will happily suggest that you use your miles at bad redemptions, but we want to make sure to maintain most of the value of your asset (miles).

Transfer Options

There are a few ways to trade your miles without losing too much value. In the previous article in this series, I talk about how to transfer Aeroplan miles to US Airways miles and exploit that. In this article, I’ll talk about how you can transfer your Aeroplan miles to American Aadvantage miles or others if you have the RBC Avion credit card (for Canadian residents only).

*Note the requirements of $250 in eligible Esso purchases on your Esso Extra account that commenter Robsaw noted on May 26.

Your options include:

US Airways (see this article)

Esso Extra

RBC Avion Points

AAdvantage Miles

British Airways Avios

Cathay Asia Miles

Westjet Dollars

Exploit Transfer Bonus

In this example, we are taking advantage of a 25% bonus that RBC is currently giving on transfers to American Airlines AAdvantage miles. Transfer bonuses come around periodically for transfers to other programs and 50% bonus on transfers to British Airways Avios are common. Without the transfer bonuses, this method will yield a poor final transfer ratio.

Requirements

What you will need for this:

Aeroplan account

Esso Extra account

Points.com account which has the Aeroplan and Esso accounts registered

RBC Avion card

American Airlines AAdvantage account

Can transfer to British Airways Avios or Cathay Pacific Asia Miles or Westjet Dollars if desired

With this method, you will be doing the following:

Conversion

Conversion Method

Ratio

Minimum to Transfer

Value of Asset

50,000 Aeroplan

Step 1

Aeroplan >> Esso Extra

Points.com

1 Aeroplan = 1.16532 Esso

15K Aeroplan

58,266 Esso Extra

Step 2

Esso Extra >> RBC Avion

Essoextra.com

500 Esso = 300 RBC

2500 Esso Extra

34,800 RBC
+266 Esso Extra

Step 3

RBC Avion >> AAdvantage

RBC.com

100 RBC = 1.25 AAdvantage*

100 RBC

43,500 AAdvantage
+266 Esso Extra

Step 1: Convert Aeroplan Miles to Esso Extra Points

Here are the steps to convert your Aeroplan miles to Esso Extra points.

Login in to your Points.com account

Choose “Trade, exchange & Buy”

Select “Move out of a program”

Choose “Aeroplan” as the program you want to move miles out of

Tell it how many you want

Click on “search now”

Ignore everything in the “Trade” section

These will be very costly and are never a good value

Choose the Esso Extra exchange in the section called “exchange – swap between your own programs”

So, i went ahead a got an Esso Extra card to transfer those annoying aeroplan points to my rbc avion points.
Transferred points to the esso card was very easy with points.com….however, when i tried to tranfer the points over to rbc, Esso will not allow me to do this. Says something to the effect that i do not have enough purchase points on my esso extra card. Do you know if they referring to actual store and/or gas purchases on the Esso extra card? Because if that is the case, i am in a bit of a pickle, I live in an extremely remote part of Canada, on Haida Gwaii (google, if you are not familiar) and we have independent gas stations (2 of them). How they heck am I going to acquire purchase points????? Any suggestions?

That one is new to me. I am going to have to spend some time doing research on what exactly that means. According to the information at https://www.rbcrewards.com/convert-points.html nothing has changed since this article was posted. If I were you, I would get on the phone with RBC and see if they can figure it out. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t be able to help you out, unless you have something very specific in your account that is preventing this from happening.

“4.2 A Member, Master Member or “Authorized Redeemer” (as defined in 4.4) may visit the Points.com website and exchange Points for other loyalty program Points. They may also exchange their Points for “Hudson’s Bay Rewards Points”, or “RBC Reward Points”. In order to begin exchanging Esso Extra Points with Hudson’s Bay Rewards points or RBC Reward points, Esso Extra members must first earn a minimum of 250 Esso Extra Points from eligible purchases made at Esso stations.”

So, first EARN 250 by purchases – a one-time requirement. I may have joined before this requirement was in place but I had some bonus earning via the speedpass too that may have qualified me so that I never encountered this issue.

I actually experienced this when doing a US Airways transfer. The limit is 50K there but you can do that transfer multiple times in any given period. It appears that the limit is only per transaction on the US Airways transfer. I wonder if that is the same for Esso as well.

Also, something of note is that people are experiencing issues transfering out of Esso to RBC if they dont have enough purchase points with Esso. Be sure that you are not trapping your Esso Extra points when you are looking to do an RBC Avion transfer.

Hello and thanks for the the info, i would like to move my Aeroplan miles to AAadvantage ive applied for a RBC Avion card , what is the process regarding spending $250 with Esso ,is that in one visit or within a certain time line.??

I don’t have a definite answer on this issue, although the conventional wisdom at Flyertalk says that you would need to have that spending in the year. If I were you, I would follow this discussion at Flyertalk as the wealth of knowledge there is quite impressive.

Im still trying to move out of Aeroplan and convert to AAdvantage how hard can it be?? Now that TD has a Aeroplan card can you imagine how many more people are looking for seats in business class ? what a farce where are all the seats /

I think if you are not desperate for the AA miles, now is not a great time to make the transfer. You should wait until there is a transfer promotion of 25% or 50% as we have seen regularly in the past.

Also, be aware of the spending requirement at Esso that others have noted.

I have 150,000+ Aeroplan points. I have a points.com account. I have applied for an Esso card and will buy the required $250 worth of gas. I also have RBC Avion and that will be the final destination for the points. Question is…. Does Aeroplan charge me $$ to transfer points out to Esso? If so, what is the charge? Thank you.

Points.com will not charge you to do the transfer (at least they shouldn’t). Just be aware of a few things.

First that you are limited to moving out 100K miles / year from Aeroplan.

Second that you should make sure that this works for a small number of miles before you do it for a large amount of miles. That is just good planning and since there is no cost to breaking it up vs 1 big deposit it is better to do it in a small increment first, I would imagine. This way, in case it doesnt work out for you you are in good shape.

Something to bear in mind though is that you can now transfer the Aeroplan miles to US Airways at about the same rate. US Airways miles are almost hte same as American Airlines miles now that the merger has gone through. Each have their positives and negatives. US Airways prices in miles are generally less than everyone elses. American miles tend to have better routing freedoms and gives you lots of opportunity to exploit free flights (for example) and price things on a one-way basis. They both give you access to the same flights. Pick your poison, but I do like the tranfser from Aeroplan directly to US Airwyas through points.com (as mentioned in the other article in this series).

What are you trying to do? Book a specific itinerary or just get miles out of Aeroplan?

Thanks for your help and suggestion.
I was just looking to get my miles out of Aeroplan as I am finding it more and more difficult to get an Air Canada flight that is convenient without paying extra miles to get a seat. I understand that the Avion system is more flexible in getting flights.

Esso still has the requirement to accumulate 250 points in in-store purchases, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend $250. If you use the Esso Extra card and purchase the highest grade gasoline (Super) you get 3x the Esso Extra points. So I only spent $84 in Super unleaded gas and got 252 Esso Extra points. I was able to transfer my Aeroplan miles to Esso Extra points to RBC rewards points by using this method.

My husband and I each have an aeroplan account and an esso account. BUT ONLY one Avion (joint) card! Will We be able to pool all the points into one avion account? Does anyone have experience with this?

I personally dont have experience with doing multiple Aeroplan accounts into a single Avion.

My thoughts are that it is likely not going to work. Points.com is very strict about things being transfered between 2 accounts of the exact same name only. Since they are integral to this< i don’t think you will be able to transfer 2 Aeroplan into the same RBC account. You MIGHT be able to set up a second RBC account, to transfer into, but it wont be connected to an Avion acco0unt to make this happen. At that point to make these valuable you will need to get a new Avion card in the new RBC account’s name.

This works. I have done this. 100,000 Aeroplan points from my Aeroplan, and 100,000 from my wife’s Aeroplan, both using Points.com, and going into each of our OWN Esso Extra accounts. THEN, transferring from EACH Esso Extra account into ONE RBC Avion card.

Anyhow can you tell me if the required esso points purchase ($250) is required to accomplish the transfer from esso to avion? If so i might bite the bullet and do it, only problem is there is no esso in the town I live in. Any options??

I believe that the $250 requirement is still there. According to the responses I have heard, there is a requirement to spend $250 before you can make the transfer.

I really dont know what options there are to spend $250 at Esso if there isnt one around you.

I agree with you that using Aeroplan can be very frustrating if the flight you are saving for all of a sudden gets more expensive or there is a fuel surcharge and your “free” flight is now $500. There is definitely value in Aeroplan miles. I just think that the marketing of it sets an unrealistic expectation of their value, and the gotchas! really add up with Aeroplan.

Can anyone direct me to a website that tells the best way to move AAdvantage (American airlines) points to RBC Avion? I’ve got about 10,000 in each of 4 accounts stranded there and just want them OUT or used up….My research is coming up fruitless so far and I’ve tried a few routes, Diners club (no longer issuing memberships), Points.com (doesn’t allow transfers out of AA to anything), West Jet points (no transfers between programs) I think I can donate them if nothing else, but I’m my own favorite charity at the moment, so I’d rather use them if possible

Thanks. Ill look into getting those screenshots where I can. Unfortunately, I dont have a RBC Avion card, so I cant do it. I’ll have to find someone who has an RBC Avion card to let me transfer some points in.

I came across this website and I am trying to convert Aeroplan to RBC Rewards using EssoExtra. Now, after setting everything and sending points to Esso, I am stuck with this EssoExtra minimum requirement. I don’t have a car so earning points on Gas is useless. I was looking to get AirCanada deal with RBC Rewards, a good deal that would have given me additional $200 off with Aeroplan miles.

Now here’s question, I need about 250 minimum Esso Extra points to transfer, can I get gift cards? I have purchased a $100 visa card and few other things and my bill was $123, and I can see that receipt says “Points : 123″, are they EssoExtra points? Can someone please help me out fast? If its a Yes, I’d probably get another $100 visa card to qualify for it.

I have two RBC credit cards that collect RBC Rewards points. It turns out that the points on credit card A cannot be converted into AA miles or Avios, contrary to those on the other card B (Avion).
Do you know if it’s possible to convert A’s RBC points into Esso points, and then convert those Esso points back into RBC points but linked to B rather than A, so that all of A’s and B’s points can be eventually converted into AA or Avios?

My understanding is that all of your RBC poitns can be pooled into a single pool and then you get the benefit of the best card that is associated with that pool.

Ie, all your RBC points are in a bucket, regardless of source. If you have an RBC Avion card, then all those points are considered RBC Avion points. IF you have just a RBC Rewards card then they are all considered the benefits of that card.

Hi. I transferred some Aeroplan to points.com and I am trying to add my RBC Avion program to my Points Loyalty Wallet but it does not appear in the dropdown box to select. Aeroplan is there and Alaska and Diners but no Avion. Am I missing something? Thanks.